


Taken With the World

by ElectricalSun



Category: The Yawhg
Genre: Artistic License, Bad Ending, Cities, Cults, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Destruction, Expanded Universe, Fairy Tale Style, Family, Forests, Gen, High Fantasy, Hospitals, Magic, Magical Accidents, Monsters, Natural Disasters, Oracles, Orphans, POV Third Person, Post-Apocalypse, Sisters, Storms, Survival, Werewolves, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 11:22:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10966197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElectricalSun/pseuds/ElectricalSun
Summary: "The Yawhg had come and gone.  We were left.  The palace, now a forbidden place, sat as a cruel bastion of memories among the broken streets.  The Guardian stood tall, eyes cold and grey like the storm that has swept our city away."Months after the Yawhg swept the city away, the remaining citizens struggle to survive.  The four attempted heroes of the storm, Miss Azure, Mr. Moss, Miss Cerise, and Mr. Aurum quickly fell from celebrated citizens, to figures of scorn, to near urban legends.  Care for the city's orphans and sick has fallen on the shoulders of the sisters Gwyn and Peppi as the looter Meinhard tries to supply citizens with enough supplies to survive.  A strange group of women known as the Guardians stripped the Mage Tower and barricaded themselves in the palace, though no one knows what takes places within the walls of the magical fortress.One day, a strange women is brought to the hospital, battered and bleeding, beginning a mystery that might bring hope, or terror, to the city already forsaken by nature and God.





	Taken With the World

The Yawhg had come and gone. We were left. The palace, now a forbidden place, sat as a cruel bastion of memories among the broken streets. The Guardian stood tall, eyes cold and grey like the storm that has swept our city away.

“Please, there are starving children,” begged the looter before her.

The guardian was unmoved. The tips of her fingers flickered with faint magical energy. The sheen of the magic matched the blue of her lips.

“You may not enter this place. Be gone,” she replied coldly.

“We can’t just let them die!” the looter nearly shouted, his voice shaking with concern.

The Guardian shook her head. “There is nothing for you here. There may be food for you in the forest. Those woods has given the Guardians much in these days.”

The looter’s hand grasped the dagger at his belt and the Guardian’s eyes followed. “The forest?” he whispered. 

The Guardian pressed her back against the archway carved into the palace as though she were to guard it with her life. The looter knew she very likely would, but the passion that coursed through him did not care if he were to be utterly decimated in this fight.

The teenage girl who accompanies the looter lightly smacked his wrist and gave a short curtsey to the pale-faced Guardian before leading her friend away. The Guardian responded with a faint nod of the head and returned to where she had been kneeling on the palace steps.

The girl led the looter away gently by the hand. “Meinhard, you do not want to pick a fight with a Guardian,” she whispered as they paced their way along the city walls on the way back to the hospital.

“She wanted me to go to the forest! You know what is in the forest,” he replied.

“Creatures to hunt,” the teenager replied flatly. “And the stone said to give the Guardians their power, not that it’s any use to us.”

“Death, Peppi. Only death,” Meinhard said with a scowl.

The two walked in silence for a while. They walked across a rotting plank of wood that spanned a large puddle set into a sinkhole formed by the storm many months prior. It creaked with the force of the looter’s heavy steps. The sky was a sheet of grey slate set emptily above an equally empty city.

“I’m sorry to push the issue,” Peppi finally said. “I know what happened to your brother in the forest.”

“And how the Guardians took him?” Meinhard growled.

The girl replied in a whisper. “Yeah.”

They reached the back door of the hospital and Peppi stuck an old iron key in the lock. They entered the kitchen, warm and inviting in comparison to the washed out cold of the outside world. It was dark but a figure could be seen stirring a pot in the kitchen’s hearth.

The woman by the hearth immediately handed Peppi a steaming bowl of soup as Meinhard hung his wool coat by the door. “Pep, you need to eat.”

Peppi made a face at the bowl of broth and potatoes. “Thanks, sis, but I don’t think I’m very hungry.”

“I don’t care; you need to keep up your strength,” replied the woman, turning back to the hearth.

Meinhard walked over to the sisters and stood behind Peppi, lifting the bowl from her hands. “I’ll give it a try, Gwyn.”

Gwyn shook her head, brown curls falling forward over her shoulder. “A large man with a large appetite. I’m glad someone appreciates my cooking, but my little sister still needs to eat.”

Peppi, frustrated, stepped up to the table on the other side of the room and tore off a hunk of stale bread and grabbed a new bowl. She returned to the hearth and filled the bowl partially with broth, carefully avoiding the potatoes, and sat next to Meinhard. “Happy?”

Her sister smiled faintly. “At least it’s something.” She ladled a bowl of soup for herself. “I take it you two had no luck at the palace?”

“No,” Meinhard grumbled.

Gwyn cut off a chunk of potato with the side of her spoon. “I told you, we haven’t been able to scavenge for food in there since Miss Azure sealed off the palace a week after the Yawhg passed.”

Peppi leaned back against one of the dark stone walls of the kitchen and opened a water damaged book. It’s title was faded before the flooding overtook the city, and now it was all but indistinguishable on the cover.

“Reading in low light is bad for your eyes,” Gwyn scolded, pointing her spoon in the direction of her sister.

“That’s not true,” Peppi said.

Gwyn sighed and watched Meinhard chew with his mouth open and full of potatoes. A piece fell off of his spoon as he took another bite, sticking into the dark scruff that covered his jawline.

Suddenly, the door through which Meinhard and Peppi had entered slammed open, letting in a rush of cold air and pale light.

“What the hell?” Meinhard protested gruffly, his back to the door.

Gwyn shot up from where she sat by the hearth and grabbed a lantern from the counter. “Bring her this way,” she said in a calm but firm manner. Her steps echoed as she left the room.

Peppi looked up from her book at the figures standing in the doorway. One was a man who she had seen before, but whose name always slipped her mind. He had a long, lean woman draped over his arms, her dark hair rustling in the wind. Her eyes were covered in a sheet of thin muslin and blood dripped from a wound in her chest.

“Where’d you find her?” asked Mainhard, far too casually for the severity of the situation.

“By the city gate,” replied the man, following Gwyn into the back room. “I think she was in the forest.”

Mainhard paled as Peppi jumped to her feet, closing the door and bolting it shut.

“Gods. Don’t let this be another omen,” Mainhard whispered as Peppi followed her sister and the new arrivals into the hospital’s wards. The fire from the heart could be heard over the silence that filled the empty room. He dropped his spoon back into his bowl, suddenly losing his appetite.


End file.
